In a wide variety of products, particularly electronic products, text interfaces pose a number of problems. One problem is that of limited processing resources in such products to accommodate new text interfaces. Another problem pertains to loss of economies of scale when producing nearly identical products with different text interfaces. Such problems frequently arise in the context of producing text interfaces for various markets with different languages.
As an example, it is useful to consider text entry in a mobile telephone. Frequently, text entry logic is implemented in a telephone in which processing resources are already used near capacity. Accordingly, any changes to accommodate different text entry features such as a different written language frequently exceed the processing and/or storage capacity of the mobile telephone. For example, written English uses generally the 26-letter Latin alphabet (upper- and lower-case), ten (10) numerical digits, and several symbols. A few hundred characters are more than sufficient to adequately represent any written expression in English. However, anywhere from nearly 7,000 to over 15,000 characters are required to adequately represent written expressions in the Chinese language. As used herein, a character is any symbol used in written language and includes, for example, letters, numerals, and ideographs.
Considering the example of a text interface for a mobile phone further, people use mobile telephones to communicate in a wide variety of languages. For example, Zi Corporation of Alberta, Canada (http://www.zicorp.com) advertises that their eZiText™ text interface is available in 32 different languages. To implement each language in a mobile telephone, different models of telephone generally must be produced for each specific language. Such can be accomplished, for example, by programming PROMs within each telephone with logic specific to a particular language for which the telephone is intended. Therefore, to implement all 32 languages, 32 different production runs of mobile telephones must be made. Some text-interface device manufacturers may decline to serve a number of potential markets, leaving those markets unserved and forfeiting some potential profits. In addition, once a product is produced for a particular language, that product is no longer useful in other markets in which other languages are used for text interfaces.
Accordingly, what is needed is a mechanism by which various languages can be easily integrated into text-interface devices without taxing already taxed processing resources and without requiring separate production of distinct models for different languages.